The Margrave's 10th-Class Ne'er-do-well

༺ 𓆩  Chapter 1 — Unique Constitution  𓆪 ༻

「Translator — Creator」

᠃ ⚘᠂ ⚘ ˚ ⚘ ᠂ ⚘ ᠃

What kind of nobleman would bow his head to his own servant?

What kind of nobleman would lend a hand with a maid’s chores?

Isaac von Goethe was such a man.

The House of Goethe were Margraves in the northeastern reaches of the kingdom.

A place where the barren environment and harsh weather stripped away even the last scrap of humanity.

Yet even in the frozen halls of the winter estate, Isaac never lost that sunlit smile of his.

"Nanny, I'll do the laundry myself. Your hands are all chapped."

"Oh my, no. Young master. This is what I'm paid to do."

“Here, take this. It’s made from some kind of plant oil. They say it helps with cracked skin.”

"Young master..."

The old nanny looked down at the boy, no more than eight years old, with eyes stung by emotion.

Could a child so angelic truly exist in this world?

Ash-grey hair like the Lady Goethe’s, and eyes a searing, icy blue just like the Margrave’s. Pale skin, sharp eyes, a fine nose, and lively lips, he was beautiful in spirit and in form.

"Huff, huff. I'm sorry for being late, young master. My, my child was very sick with a cold last night. So, I overslept..."

Next to them stood a servant, pale as a ghost, shaking with terror at the punishment he was sure would come.

At the last manor he worked in, every minute of tardiness had earned him a lash. Ten minutes late, ten lashes. That was how he’d been fired, left to recover from a high fever for an entire month, barely able to move.

Perhaps it would be the same this time.

He desperately wanted to avoid being dismissed at the very least.

Without money, when the merciless cold of the approaching winter came, his family would either starve or freeze to death—one or the other.

“Your name’s Hans, right?”

“Y-Yes? Y-Yes, my lord.”

“And your son’s name is Peter.”

“H-How did you…?”

"I asked the nanny. Is Peter alright? Colds here are different from other places. If you're not careful, it could become serious. Schiller, Schiller!"

But Isaac didn’t rebuke him. He didn’t speak a word of punishment. He darted from the room instead, calling for the chamberlain.

Hans flinched, his heart lurching.

It was too soon to feel relieved.

The young lord could be summoning the chamberlain to request harsh discipline. And the chamberlain, cold-blooded and merciless, was a devil in the eyes of the servants.

“Hans. The young master has told me everything.”

Soon, the chamberlain found him. Hans was in the midst of carrying baggage and froze as if the biting winds of winter had struck him down then and there.

“M-Master Chamberlain. Please, I beg of you. Let me work, just until the winter passes. If I’m thrown out now, my wife and child will die… they’ll freeze or starve, or both…”

“Are you still dreaming? Wake yourself up!”

“Ah! I-I’m sorry! I’m so sorry…”

Hans bowed repeatedly, spine bent low in submission.

“I said pull yourself together! No one here is going to drive you out."

“P-Pardon?”

When Hans finally dared to lift his head, he met the stern eyes of the seasoned old man. But instead of punishment, what the chamberlain extended was a bundle wrapped in leather.

“Boil this and drink it. You have a pot at home, I assume?”

“Y-Yes, yes, I do. But... what is this?”

“It’s medicine. The young master asked me to make sure you received it.”

“Oh, gods… Thank you. Thank you so much. Truly, thank you!”

“Save your thanks for Young Master Isaac. If it were up to me, you’d already be out in the snow.”

Chamberlain Schiller looked decidedly displeased. To him, Isaac’s mercy was too gentle, too soft. Yet regardless of Schiller’s opinions, Isaac was loved, respected and admired by every soul in the estate.

He was, after all, only eight years old.

“Congratulations, young master!”

“Please don’t forget us!”

Then came the year Isaac turned ten.

Already hailed as a prodigy, he received a formal letter of recommendation for admission to the Royal Academy. He read and comprehended magical theory texts that baffled even enrolled students. He solved complex academic problems others couldn’t even approach.

The winter manor burst into celebration.

Margrave Goethe, the Lady, his younger brother Jonas, all rejoiced, joined by the estate’s staff who celebrated from the heart.

With both virtue and intellect to his name, Isaac was expected to grow into someone truly remarkable.

Everyone had high hopes.

Everyone believed in him.

But Isaac could not live up to those expectations.

In the end, he never set foot in the Academy.

Just a month before his enrollment date, he came down with a sudden flu. The fever was relentless. He vomited without warning. At times, he coughed up blood.

The enrollment date was postponed again and again. But the illness refused to let go.

Three months passed in this state.

Eventually, Margrave Goethe dismissed every physician who kept calling it "just the flu" and summoned an old scholar from the Mage Tower.

“Young master has a peculiar constitution,” said the old scholar.

“A peculiar constitution?”

“As the Margrave knows,” the old man began, “all living beings are born with an innate vessel for mana. And mana flows through that vessel at a natural pace, like water that flows, evaporates, returns as rain, and flows again. It’s the cycle of nature. But the young master’s mana flow is… shall we say, abnormal. It is violent. Wild. And so fast I cannot even begin to measure it.”

“Speak plainly,” Margrave Goethe said sharply.

"In the southern continent, so much rain falls during the rainy season that floods occur. The river swells with too much water, and the current becomes excessively fierce and fast. The surrounding villages are submerged and destroyed. The young master's mana circulation is like that. The difference is that the southern continent only suffers such hardship during the rainy season, but the young master experiences it constantly, regardless of the time. At this rate, the vessel will shatter before long."

"That means..."

"You must prepare yourself mentally. Once the vessel shatters, he won't last long. He'll either become a cripple or waste away in illness..."

The scholar swallowed his remaining words.

He didn't want to needlessly invite the Margrave's wrath.

* * *

Twenty years had passed.

The beautiful boy who had been loved and admired by all was long gone.

Deep beneath the estate, in the family’s secret underground vault — a chamber filled with damp cold and heavy air. Every inch of the walls was lined with Dimagiterium, a rare mineral known for its remarkable resistance to magic.

Isaac opened his eyes slowly.

He no longer knew how long he had been lost in meditation; the walls before him were slick with moss and mold. When he stared at the stains long enough, they seemed to take the shapes of faces — his father’s face, his mother’s, Jonas’s.

Faces he could no longer see.

Faces he should no longer look upon.

Faces that now existed only in his memory.

So many people had been injured or killed because of Isaac.
All of them had been people he cherished.

“I should have pushed them away,” the gaunt young man murmured like a ghost.

The old scholar who had once diagnosed him had been only half-right.

The vessel had shattered.
Isaac’s mana burst forth like a dam breaking; the torrents of power inside him collided with the mana of the outside world.

Then a mana explosion occurred.

All the furniture in the room was destroyed, and the nanny who had been organizing his clothes was injured.

Yet Isaac did not wither away, nor did he die slowly.
As if nothing had happened, the vessel repaired itself.
At first, everyone thought it a miracle, a sign that the gods had looked kindly upon the boy who had lived so virtuously.

But it was no miracle.

It was a catastrophe.

The vessel repeatedly shattered and caused explosions.

And those who loved Isaac died.

— No, young master. I still like you. Really. This is just… just a hard time you’re going through. When it passes, it’ll be nothing. That’s what life is, isn’t it?

Those had been Hans’s final words.
Even as the explosions grew more frequent, even as his body bore more and more wounds, Hans insisted that no one else could care for Isaac in his stead. He stayed.

And so he died, leaving behind a wife and child he had sworn to protect.
When the next explosion came, Hans’s body was hurled across the room and slammed into the wall. His neck snapped instantly. He died on the spot.

One by one, the people around Isaac disappeared.

For a time, Isaac refused food and raged like a madman.
He hurled water cups in the morning, plates at noon, and overturned the wooden tub in the evening. Sometimes he struck the servants and attendants themselves.

Aside from the few retainers who still believed in him, everyone else whispered that he had finally lost his mind. That once the next explosion came, he would never rise again. That he would at last become a true madman, or a husk.

It was only natural.
This strange constitution of his was no different from an incurable disease.
And because of it, the people he cared for kept dying.

At the time, Isaac was only thirteen.
What he had endured would have broken grown men, let alone a boy.
It was no wonder his mind had frayed.
And yet, after a long period of despair, Isaac eventually pulled himself together.

— Nanny, I’m sorry. I’ve been disgraceful.

— Disgraceful? Oh no, it’s alright. There was nothing you could have done. Truly, there was nothing you could have done.

The nanny wept, overcome.

She had poured into Isaac all the love she’d once reserved for the child she lost to pneumonia.

Seeing the boy she cherished admit his faults and rise above his pain, she was so proud, so heartbroken she could hardly speak.

For a while, peace returned.

Isaac went to every servant and attendant, offering apologies and gratitude for enduring him.

He bowed his head, regardless of their station.

Not everyone accepted it, but for some whose hearts had frozen over, a little warmth began to thaw. Winter was approaching, yet for many in the manor, the air felt faintly warm.

Up to that point, it was still bearable.
Isaac had been thrashing in the swamp but had caught himself before sinking.
There were still people throwing him ropes.
They still loved him.

“I should have cut them off,” the young man murmured again, ghostlike.

In those days, opinions of Isaac had split in two.
To some, he was an uncontrollable monster.
To others, he was a kind and steadfast young master, fighting bravely through his ordeal.
The people who tried to save him belonged to the latter.
They tied ropes around themselves to pull Isaac from the pit, offering up their own lives to save his.

And death was the price.

A year after Hans’s death, the nanny was caught in an explosion and killed.
The following year, two maids died as well.
Isaac wept until his tears ran dry.
He screamed until his voice broke.

And still he did not stop.

Even when anger welled up from the depths of his chest, layered and heavy as stone, he pressed on, day and night.

Meditation. Running. Swordsmanship. Research into magic and alchemy. Seeking out magical tools and stabilizing elixirs. Mana control training. Incantations to slow the speed of his mana circulation. Correspondence with magical scholars. Methods for predicting the next explosion.

When he closed his eyes, he could see the faces of those injured or killed because of him. So Isaac did not rest. He worked until he collapsed, going three or four days without sleep and then lying unconscious for one or two.

By then, Isaac was fifteen.

He knew he was fighting a battle he could not win.

And yet, he neither faltered nor gave up.

Those who had died because of him.
A mother wandering the continent for years, seeking a cure for her son.
A father enduring loss after loss, bearing every cost his son’s condition inflicted upon the family.
Jonas, the younger brother, steadfast no matter how Isaac changed.

To Isaac, despair and surrender felt like luxuries.
He wavered constantly but did not break.
He fell but stood again.
He believed he could always rise.

“Ah…”

The young man rubbed his face with dry hands.

The moment his younger brother’s innocent face had contorted with pain never left him.
Even after decades, it was as vivid as ever.

His brother. Jonas.
He had only wanted to play the lute for his sleepless brother.
To soothe him with the same tune their mother had often played as a lullaby.
But misfortune never chose its hour.

Everyone who heard Jonas’s playing praised him.
Even court musicians called him a prodigy.

And yet it was Jonas’s right hand that had been torn away by one of Isaac’s explosions.

The memory remained carved into Isaac’s mind; unfaded, mercilessly clear.
The pale haze of dust and debris.
Servants collapsed on the floor.
Raindrops, falling like blood through shattered glass.
The taste of iron and blood in his mouth.
The disbelief in his brother’s eyes.
The ceaseless flow of blood from Jonas’s severed wrist.
The belated scream.

That feeling, again and again, of plummeting, of falling endlessly into some dark and fathomless abyss; there was never a moment in his life when being alive felt more cursed.

That day, Isaac spoke to his father:

“Please… lock me somewhere no one can come. Somewhere no one will be hurt.”

The face of the fifteen-year-old boy had already become the face of an old man.

END σϝ CHAPTER